He wanted those stolen emails. And he would do it again.
by digby
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the DOJ has released a number of FBI interviews from the Mueller investigation in full. This is particularly interesting:
President Donald Trump and other top 2016 Trump campaign officials repeatedly privately discussed how the campaign could get access to stolen Democratic emails WikiLeaks had in 2016, according to newly released interview notes from Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation.
CNN sued the Justice Department for access to Mueller’s witness interview notes, and this weekend’s release marks the first publicly available behind-the-scenes look at Mueller’s investigative work outside of court proceedings and the report itself. Per a judge’s order, the Justice Department will continue to release new tranches of the Mueller investigative notes monthly to CNN and Buzzfeed News, which also sued for them.
A retelling of events from former Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, who served alongside campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is the fullest detail revealed by the Justice Department yet on discussions within the Trump campaign as it pursued damaging information about its Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The documents were stolen by the Russians, the American intelligence community has found.
A reminder:
TRUMP: … And Putin, I will say this: if he had it, it was up to him. He would much rather have Hillary Clinton be president right now. And all of these countries would rather have Biden or anybody else but Trump.
STEPHANOPOULOS: He said he was trying to help elect you. He said that explicitly.
TRUMP: Well he might’ve said that after I won, because it’s a smart thing to say. Okay?
STEPHANOPOULOS: And Mueller says that he’s trying to do that–
TRUMP: Mueller said that we rebuffed Russia, that we pushed them away, that we weren’t interested. Read the report.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I have read the report. On that though your son Don Jr. is up before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, and again, he was not charged with anything. In retrospect though–
TRUMP: I mean not only wasn’t he charged, if you read it, with all of the horrible fake news, I mean, I was reading that my son was going to go to jail. This is a good young man. That he was going to go to jail and all of these horrible stories. And then the report comes out and they didn’t even say, they-they–hardly talked about him.
STEPHANOPOULOS: (inaudible) going to the FBI when he got that email.
TRUMP: Okay, let’s put yourself in a position: you’re a congressman, somebody comes up and says, “Hey I have information on your opponent.” Do you call the FBI?
STEPHANOPOULOS: (inaudible) if it’s coming from Russia you do.
TRUMP: I’ll tell you what: I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you–
STEPHANOPOULOS: Al Gore got a stolen briefing book. He called the FBI.
TRUMP: Well, that’s different. A stolen briefing book. This isn’t a (inaudible). This is somebody who said “We have information on your opponent.” Oh, let me call the FBI. Give me a break, life doesn’t work that way.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The FBI Director says that’s what should happen.
TRUMP: The FBI Director is wrong. Because, frankly, it doesn’t happen like that in life. Now, maybe it will start happening. Maybe today you think differently, but two or three years ago, if somebody comes into your office with oppo research–they call it oppo research–with information that might be good or bad or something, but good for you, bad for your opponent, you don’t call the FBI. I would guarantee you that 90 percent, could be 100 percent of the congressmen or the senators over there, have had meetings, if they didn’t they probably wouldn’t be elected, on negative information about their opponent–
STEPHANOPOULOS: From foreign countries?
TRUMP: They don’t pro–possibly. Possibly. But they don’t call the FBI. You don’t call the FBI every time some–you hear something that maybe–…
He also said that if someone came to him with information about his 2020 candidate he’d do it again. Clearly, he also believes it’s “perfectly” fine to extort foreign countries to smear his opponent in exchange for US aid.
He is an ignorant, amoral, monster who does not understand, nor would he care, that he did something unethical or illegal. And his enablers and accomplices in the GOP are willing to sell their souls to stay in power. They know he’s a criminal. But as long as they have the excuse that their vacant base believes he’s great they aren’t going to lift a finger to enlighten them. They don’t care either.
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